Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[delericho]

[MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION] – we discussed Taking 10 on the INT roll yesterday. I didn’t look that close – did you? Specifically, is there any rule that says you can Take 10 on an attribute roll, or anything other than a skill roll? This is an Intelligence check, not a skill check, after all.

Yes, you can: "The normal take 10 and take 20 rules apply for ability checks. Neither rule applies to caster level checks."

 

[Dandu]

N'raac, what are your thoughts on the fact that I played a game of Tomb of Horrors where the party's primary arcane spellcaster was much more useful than the fighter?

While my sorcerer contributed in many ways, the fighter was not able to do much as most of the combat that would occur was too deadly for him, he could not scout as the traps would have killed him, bypass obstacles, or find the secret passages we used to explore the dungeon. (We ended up spending more time in the Jefferies tubes than the actual dungeon proper, on the assumption that it was safer and quicker to do so.)

 

[N'raac]

Depends on the system. In 3.5e? I'd chuck the core casters and replace them with Favoured Soul and Sorcerers and various other variant casters. Tome of Magic classes would work nicely. Replace core fighter types with Tome of Battle fighter types and you're good to go.

So the solution to the Wizard is the removal of the Wizard. Fair enough, I suppose.

Where do all those magic items come from under this model, as these casters strike me as unlikely to possess a wide array of prerequisite spells? Maybe we return magic items to rarities, but I do rather like having a functional item crafting system (even if it becomes much more costly and complex, to enforce a greater rarity of magic items).

Besides, the non-core fighter types generally have better skill packages, making them more useful outside of combat.

I’m definitely onside for better skill packages for the non-magical classes. It may be counterintuitive to give, say, fighters more base skill points than wizards, but fighters don’t devote a significant portion of their time to training and research in magic, leaving less time to pursue other skills (easy fluff).

@Hussar has a good answer for this that I mostly agree with. I think having the core casters in the game isn't just bad for disparity in scene (re-)framing and complex, non-combat conflict resolution with respect to (primarily) mundane classes.

However, if we're just talking about leveling the playing field and bringing the tier 4/5s up to tier 2/1, then I would look to other systems for inspiration. There needs to be some ability for players of mundane classes to impose their will upon the fiction in the same way that casters do. Unfortunately, most folks don't like these answers because they often involve tangling with the metagame mechanics of author and director stance. You can see these things in:

5e - Background Traits are basically insurance (sort of like BW Instincts) for player narrative imposition. These things are just true about your character and you can invoke them with no risk of GM veto. You're a Knight? Well you get the perks and fictional positioning that comes with that trait, guaranteed.

4e - Lots here from expanding Rituals to everyone (assuming they have the relevant skills), Martial Practices that allow scene framing and scene transitioning through mundane abilities, and a conflict resolution framework that makes the skill system the primary entry point for non-combat, conflict resolution. Each skill carries a lot of heft (ensuring strong competency in many things with just 4 skills) and theme powers, skill powers, and feat powers are all decoupled from class, ensuring that means to resolve non-combat conflicts is available to everyone. Obviously lots of Author stance combat exploits and some Director.

While I can’t comment on the individual systems, I agree that focusing attention on giving non-spellcasters abilities outside of combat is very much mandated. Whether that’s on a metagame level (hero point type mechanics, for example) or more specific abilities linked more directly to the character is very much a matter of taste, but either seems a reasonable approach. I think the metagame approach is foreign to 3.5 and prior editions (again, I can’t speak as confidently to 4e/5e), so I’d lean to specific out of combat abilities (ideally a roster of choices, rather than a fixed level by level progression) for non-casters.

I’d also lean strongly to WAY more spells that are on neither the Wizard nor Cleric list, but restricted to specific other classes, domains, archetypes, etc. One of the biggest advantage the Wizard and Cleric share is expansion materials. This book or that adds a new base class, with its own spell list – drawn largely from existing spells, with some new spells in that book available to these new classes, but typically also to the base classes. When another book is published, the new spells are generally usable by the new classes that book creates, perhaps another class or two it focuses on – and wizards and clerics again.

While we’re at it, any spell not intended to be combat-useful (I see you over there, Teleport!) gets a 10 minute+ casting time and/or other modifications making it less combat useful (maybe Teleport makes an audible noise and a bright flash on arrival, and those Teleported are Dazed for a minute, no saves or resistances). Not quite “ritual”, but an easy way to avoid abuses while leaving its main purpose (such as long distance travel) intact.

There are... few of which, I imagine, a Fighter could accomplish?

He can’t ambush a Lizard Man and question it with Intimidation?

A couple of problems. First is the language barrier, but isn’t that why so many people speak Common. The second is that stealth - whether by magic or mundane means – tends not to be a group activity, so the party is split.

A bigger problem – we’ve kind of gotten used to magic solving everything. So let’s give some special abilities to our “stuff of legend” fighters and rogues to rival the special abilities available to their spellcasting counterparts.

You can get some nice EX abilities. War Troll, iirc, can daze victims on a melee attack, and Arrow Demons get to wield two bows at once for shenanigans. Polymorphing the Rogue into a Hydra gets him a lot of extra attacks, each one of which can apply Sneak Attack damage.

Does Polymorph still alter all your gear (Large size War Troll)? I hope so! Arrow demons are outsiders off the Polymorph list (no Outsiders). Still lots of good optons – but better when applied to teammates than to self.

But the reason PF beefed up non-spellcasters was that many were not having fun, because when the wizard, his familar, and the cleric divine the enemy's location and defenses, transport you to the lair, and manage dictate the terms of engagement, some people feel inadaquate. Like what an infantryman feels when he sees an A-10 tear though a column of tanks, or artillery demolish a city block.

Yet that’s not what Pathfinder beefed up. I think there are two group dynamics here. One is “if the team can do it, that’s good enough”, so Teleport is seen as a facilitator for the team, not glory for the Wizard. The other, however, sees it more individually, and the Fighter player wants his turn to help the whole team out. Noncombat abilities for the non-spellcasters would go a long way to helping out the second dynamic and does no harm t the first.

The fighter merely has to be present in the cloud, and he should have enough reach in order to make his presence known.

The war troll and the dragon both have 10’ reach, I think. Again, should be a good battle, but will be a team battle.

Running away for 10 minutes per level also gives the murderhobos enough time to loot everything that isn't nailed down and half the things that are.

During which time that Dragon may be herding his lizardmen followers to ambush the spell-expired, encumbered heroes/hobos as they emerge from his lair.

Here's my question: let's say a Dragon is strafing a town/city/palace in order to exact revenge/steal gold/ kidnap the princess/whatever and the party needs to stop it. The fighter hast to get out a bow and starts shooting. The wizard has the option of causing the Dragon to stall out of the air with Solid Fog or, if he has access to Evocation, Wall of Force.

The fighter has to deal with the Dragon's decision to fly. The wizard can make flight more difficult.

Dragons like the Hover feat. Solid Fog slows it (for its 20’ radius, 20’ high), while the Wall is a 10’ square per level. These will certainly inconvenience the dragon, but I don’t envision it plummeting from the sky.

And the fighter has to slot through the Dragon's HP, which might take a few rounds. Fair or not, the wizard, by the rules, has an option of ending the fight much more quickly, with Assay Spell Resistance (immediate action) + Reach Spell Shivering Touch.

I remain with the question whether Shivering Touch is more the problem than spellcasting in general. Let's ad third level spells that target each other characteristic in the same manner and see how that works out. Better yet, how about a Fighter or Rogue feat that allows them to Confuse, reducing a mental stat of any one target by 3d6 with virtually no ability of the target to avoid the effect. That seems similar to Shivering Touch as suggested to be applied in these scenarios. Let's give it to them at 5th level, when wizards get 3rd level spells.

I don't believe I was asked to completely dominate the game

It was the charge levied against spellcasters. Interesting to see your example of sorcerers when the suggested solution above is to eliminate wizards in favour of sorcerers.

In the after game analysis, the group widely agreed that ToH was poorly designed in 3.5e because the classes that can puzzle out the dungeon and survive would be limited to skilled classes and magic users; since the encounters were usually so deadly, fighters could not expect to fight and survive.

Sounds like a scenario designed to frustrate the fighters – I wonder how CR of the encounters compare to the Fighter’s level.

Why not just redesign your PC-build rules so that all PCs come out much the same in terms of mechanical and story effectiveness? It's not inherent to the concept of a fantasy RPG that there be these sorts of disparities across class design.

So what’s the redesign? The sorcerer shift didn’t do the trick, apparently. ToH can still be designed to favour spellcasters over fighters (any scenario can be designed to favour some abilities over others, so that’s neither here nor there – a good array of challenges is the answer there).

My response to this is similar. If I have to turn to the encumbrance rules - a somewhat obscure and generally tedious subsystem - in order to avoid wizards being overpowered, the game has (in my view) taken a wrong turn.

I don’t find it obscure, or overly difficult. What is the penalty for a low STR for a non-melee combatant if we ignore encumbrance? To me, that 7 STR should be just as defining as a 19 INT – characters are made interesting by both their strengths and their weaknesses.

If it's a counter-argument: I'd expect to see a Wizard with a (any!) belt of giant's strength about as often as I'd expect to see one being hit by a ray of enfeeblement. That is, basically never. As I said, I genuinely don't see encumbrance being any sort of a real balancing factor against Wizard power - not least since one of the first spells I ever encountered, back in the old Red Box 25 years ago, was Tenser's floating disk, a spell specifically designed to bypass such limitations!

The Haversack is an item designed to do the same. The disk reminds me more of a mule (or mule train), but we’d hate to use something mundane rather than a spell, right? As someone else noted, you want to carry some gear.

I don’t think encumbrance balances spellcasting so much as it provides some penalty for dumping STR. I like the concept that every stat has at least SOME meaning to all characters.

This is an important point. I think it's easy to see that certain circumstances can favor some classes over others. However, with regards to spellcasters those circumstances seem to be assumed for some reason.

Agreed.

 

[delericho]

The other, however, sees it more individually, and the Fighter player wants his turn to help the whole team out. Noncombat abilities for the non-spellcasters would go a long way to helping out the second dynamic and does no harm t the first.

Absolutely.

I don’t find it obscure, or overly difficult. What is the penalty for a low STR for a non-melee combatant if we ignore encumbrance? To me, that 7 STR should be just as defining as a 19 INT – characters are made interesting by both their strengths and their weaknesses.

I don’t think encumbrance balances spellcasting so much as it provides some penalty for dumping STR. I like the concept that every stat has at least SOME meaning to all characters.

Yes, I agree with both paragraphs here - a low stat should absolutely be a meaningful impediment to the character (whichever stat it is, and whichever class), and every class should have some meaning to all characters. Of course, fixing the latter almost certainly gives the former for free.

Incidentally, I think the other big problem with the spellcasters (aside from sheer flexibility from spells) is that they can too easily bypass the Vancian casting that is their major limiting factor. Not only do they simply have too many spells at anything over the lowest levels (and, annoyingly, too few at 1st level), but the use of cheap scrolls and wands of low-level spells allows them to ignore slots entirely - this is especially true of those spells that don't significantly scale with level. So, if we're into "fixing the system" territory, something probably needs to be done about that. (One simple fix would be to change scrolls and wands from the current model, where they give an extra casting of a spell, to instead allowing the caster to swap out a prepared spell (or slot) in order to spontaneously cast the spell.)

 

[N'raac]

Yes, you can: "The normal take 10 and take 20 rules apply for ability checks. Neither rule applies to caster level checks."

Just a little further down - thanks. I'd have to consider, then, whether you are "threatened or distracted" by the casting of the spell itself, but I think imposing the appropriate limits of one word answers likely covers it. "Distracted" is poorly defined, appearing mainly as a Concentration skill issue. COP has a duration of "concentration" - is concentrating on another spell "a distraction"? It is enough that you cannot concentrate to cast a second spell. Inconclusive discussion at http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lu4s?Take-10-Rules-and-Contact-Other-Plane. I'm inclined to "take 10 is not valid" based on some extensive analysis there, but probably as much based on "why have the threat otherwise, especially when most levels are moot for anyone with the 15 INT needed to cast the spell".

N'raac, what are your thoughts on the fact that I played a game of Tomb of Horrors where the party's primary arcane spellcaster was much more useful than the fighter?

From your comments, I get the sense the encounters were unwinnable by the fighter's skill set, so the structure of the scenario prevented fighters being relevant. Do the CR's of the unwinnable combats match the character levels? If the challenges are all designed to be a challenge to spellcasters or rogues with level-appropriate abilities, and the combats to be well above CR so fighting isn't viable, it seems like fighters would also not be viable.

 

[Cyclone_Joker]

Wizards learn through intelligence, seek out arcane lore and prepare spells. Sorcerers possess innate magic potential which they harness through force of will and personality. It is commonly assumed the sorcerer has some magical creature in its ancestry, but not necessarily a dragon.

I refer you to Races of the Dragon. And I'd call autodidacts learning through intelligence.

And that’s less mechanical than the interpretation of “reasonable”.

I'd call the bajillion wasted pages in the various Dragon books more relevant than one word that means nothing.

It provides the same level of knowledge regarding magic traditions and arcane symbols. For appropriate creatures, it provides one useful bit of information at a DC of 10 + HD, more for each 5 points the roll succeeds by.

Which is easy for any self-respecting wizard.

“All questions are answered with “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “never,” “irrelevant,” or some other one-word answer.” A 10% chance of a lie or random answer also exists at the “Greater deity” level. You’ll need a lot of castings to go from “I have the vague sense there is a dragon out there somewhere” to a copy of the GM’s map of the lair, surrounding area and the dragon’s stat block.

Not really. It's easy. You have a bunch of questions per level and a bunch of slots per level. Especially if you took Spontaneous Divination.

You're joking, right? "Clear idea" and "Study" are both trivially easy with divination.

You keep saying that. I am waiting for the divination spell that gets you an hour of studying the location. And I don’t interpret a 10’ square to be “a clear idea of the location”.

How about an hour of blowing divinations on the area?

Frankly, I long since gave up any care what, if anything, you get from my posts. I generally post about the issue, not to any specific poster.

Ah, so you don't care about actually communicating when attempting to communicate. Nice.

See, the thing about irony is – it’s just so darned ironic!

Let's ignore your ignorance about what "irony" means and go straight to you comically missing the point and ignoring that, unlike yours, I actually said something in my post.

Yet you are trying to push your ideas of reason on such creatures.

No, I'm pointing out that your argument is absurd and nonsensical.

Are you telling us you do not consider yourself (or your ideas of reason) to be human?

Uh, what?

It only has a +12 will save to attempt daily. And an 18 CHA, so that check will have a shot, although that DC is quite high. Enjoy your opposed CHA checks. As well

Opposed checks in which they have massive penalties and I have bonuses?

Indefinite service cannot even be bargained for effectively. Looking more deeply at the Planar Binding rules, you also need a Magic Circle, focused inward. That circle lasts a maximum of 24 hours per caster level, so your time to persuade the target is not unlimited.

Yes it is. Extend is easy, and that's ignoring massive CL boosters.

I rather suspect a response of “Foolish mortal – do you think you torment me? I am a creature of Hell – I have endured centuries of torments you cannot even imagine!”

Given the scope of the penalties that can be applied, I call "bull." Also, if it really did so, it should want out.

I don’t see anything that says you can’t cast spells on the victim. Other than that, I think your approach at obtaining a long-term servant relies on a pretty lenient interpretation of the rules, and your views that you can obtain a lifelong servant completely ignores the limit on indefinite services set out in the spell rules themselves.

It's not truly indefinite. A life is pretty well defined.

But feel free to continue criticizing the reading abilities of those who do not bow to your wisdom!

Okay, but I'll just stick to those incapable of reading.

About that heirarchical evil society – I wonder how that Devil’s REAL master feels about these presumptuous mortals stealing away his servant.

Apathy? Low level minions are going to be meaningless to someone on a demon lord's level.

In any case, the belief “potentially indefinite service” is even remotely possible demonstrates a failure to actually read and/or comprehend the rules.

No, it would be on you.

As to corrupting the wizard, he’s already summoning devils. Seems like that ship has sailed.

No, not really. Unless you accept BoVD's awful rules, in which case everyone in the universe is already irredeemably evil, so it doesn't matter much.

You act like you can win the Internet, somehow. It’s quite entertaining, so please don’t stop on my account!

You're adorable. It's like you actually think I'm going to accept your terribly-executed dodges.

I’d call removing the restrictions of spells to let the wizard have his powers extended “coddling”. Perhaps my own failure to consider whether Take 10 could properly apply to that COP INT roll was a form of coddling. Certainly, assuming any task the wizard requests, or ignoring the time limit on “indefinite servitude”, or failing to determine the duration and restrictions on the Planar Bindings and the attendant Magic Circles, thus interpreting the spells entirely to the Wizard’s favour, rather than objectively applying the rules as written, would reasonably be considered “coddling the wizard”. At least, to my limited human reasoning.

No, those are rules. I hardly call rules "coddling"

 

[Dandu]

He can’t ambush a Lizard Man and question it with Intimidation?

Well, ambushing generally implies stealth, which the Fighter does not have.

Finding the lizardfolks requires some means of tracking them down unless the Fighter wants to wait around in a swamp somewhere on the off chance lizardmen pass by. This is also not an ability he possesses.

Intimidate requires skill points which the fighter does not have an abundance of.

I'll grant you he can intimidate people as that is within the abilities of the class, but setting up ambushes for Lizardfolk seems much more difficult.

A bigger problem – we’ve kind of gotten used to magic solving everything.

I think in real life, we've gotten used to using technology to solve everything. Why don't we do things the old fashioned way, with manual labor and 16 hour workdays?

So let’s give some special abilities to our “stuff of legend” fighters and rogues to rival the special abilities available to their spellcasting counterparts.
Fighters need no special abilities as they are already perfectly balanced.

In fact, the campaign setting favors them so much that they should be nerfed, if anything.

Does Polymorph still alter all your gear (Large size War Troll)? I hope so!

Rules of the Game - Polymorphing Revisited, Part 3

As a rule of thumb, a change from a form that has a humanoid shape to another form that also has a humanoid shape leaves all equipment in place and functioning. The creature's equipment changes to match the assumed form. It becomes the appropriate size for the assumed form and it fits the assumed form at least as well as it fit the original form. The being can change minor details in its equipment, such as color, surface texture, and decoration.

Yet that’s not what Pathfinder beefed up.

Well, I never said they did the right thing, just that the reason for what they tried to do.

The war troll and the dragon both have 10’ reach, I think.

Yes, but the Fighter can wield a reach weapon.

During which time that Dragon may be herding his lizardmen followers to ambush the spell-expired, encumbered heroes/hobos as they emerge from his lair.

Why would the heroes walk out when they have teleport?

Dragons like the Hover feat. Solid Fog slows it (for its 20’ radius, 20’ high), while the Wall is a 10’ square per level. These will certainly inconvenience the dragon, but I don’t envision it plummeting from the sky.

I believe that, by the fight rules, if you have poor maneuverability, you have a minimum forward speed, and if you cannot maintain it, you must land at the end of your movement.

The dragon is free to use the Hover feat if he has a move action left, which will probably be the next round. Of course, that is when, ideally, someone will be tying it down with attacks/spells/nets/bubblegum.

I remain with the question whether Shivering Touch is more the problem than spellcasting in general.

Well, that depends on the number of broken spells available; if there are too much, it becomes a problem that spellcasting in general is overpowered.

It was the charge levied against spellcasters. Interesting to see your example of sorcerers when the suggested solution above is to eliminate wizards in favour of sorcerers.

Unfortunately, I did not bring wizards to the event as I wanted to try and blast my way though the Tomb of Horrors. It didn't turn out that way, but I did not know that ahead of time.

Sounds like a scenario designed to frustrate the fighters – I wonder how CR of the encounters compare to the Fighter’s level.

The Tomb of Horrors was intended to frustrate everyone, at least from the stories I've been told. I am not sure what the CR of the monster behind the wall was (it killed our paladin in one round, iirc) but a Balor is Cr 20. (At least, I think it was a balor. We did not stick around long enough to find out for sure.)

So what’s the redesign? The sorcerer shift didn’t do the trick, apparently. ToH can still be designed to favour spellcasters over fighters (any scenario can be designed to favour some abilities over others, so that’s neither here nor there – a good array of challenges is the answer there).

Giving Fighters non-combat abilities seems to be the logical answer. In Auty Paladin, we concluded that ToH was a poor adventure because it was like a puzzle only half the team could work on directly.

Either designing it so that everyone could participate, or simply giving every player more options from classes and letting the players find ways to apply those options to various situations, would have been better.

I don’t find it obscure, or overly difficult. What is the penalty for a low STR for a non-melee combatant if we ignore encumbrance? To me, that 7 STR should be just as defining as a 19 INT – characters are made interesting by both their strengths and their weaknesses.

I do not believe anyone is saying that 7 STR should not be penalized, just that encumbrance does not balance out the abilities available to spellcasters.

 

[delericho]

Just a little further down - thanks. I'd have to consider, then, whether you are "threatened or distracted" by the casting of the spell itself, but I think imposing the appropriate limits of one word answers likely covers it. "Distracted" is poorly defined, appearing mainly as a Concentration skill issue. COP has a duration of "concentration" - is concentrating on another spell "a distraction"? It is enough that you cannot concentrate to cast a second spell. Inconclusive discussion at http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lu4s?Take-10-Rules-and-Contact-Other-Plane. I'm inclined to "take 10 is not valid" based on some extensive analysis there, but probably as much based on "why have the threat otherwise, especially when most levels are moot for anyone with the 15 INT needed to cast the spell".

Yep, I'd agree with that. There's no point in a DC 7 Int check that you can take 10 on, especially for a character who must have a 15 Int to cast the spell in the first place.

Having said that, contact other plane is actually a rather badly written spell, probably as a legacy of being brought across from 2nd Edition. Having the spell reduce the character to 8 Int and Cha rather than applying some amount of ability damage is clunky, and there's no real need for the stated durations either - better instead just to use the standard rules for healing ability damage.

That said, I guess they didn't want removing the effects to be as simple as casting a restoration...

 

[Dandu]

I have a question about taking 10, then.

If a Rogue is trying to argue his case before a judge who will sentence him to 10 years in prison, can the Rogue take 10 on Diplomacy or Bluff?

 

[delericho]

I would say "no", unless he has Skill Mastery. That situation has got to be at least as stressful as combat, and the consequences of failure are at least as significant as the failure of any single combat action.

So, no.

IMO, of course. YMMV.

Edit: Of course, I think I'm actually in favour of getting rid of "take 10", "take 20" and retries on skills altogether. Roll, and move on. But I'm not 100% convinced on that one...